The virtual explosion of technical advances in microelectronics, digital computers and software have changed the face of modern society. In fact, these technological advances have become so important and pervasive that this explosion is sometimes referred to as "the information revolution." Through telephone lines, cables, satellite communications and the like, information and resources are ever increasingly being accessed and shared.
Some attempts have been made for computers and software to interpret and understand the content of data. One such attempt is sometimes referred to as linguistic morphology, which in general terms involves applying computational language mechanisms to text. For instance, a two or three page report could be summarized to produce an outline of topics or an abstract using linguistic morphological techniques.
Another attempt for computers to understand content is to attaching a header or description along with a data, such as a PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection). PICS are used to tag data so as to provide metadata about the content of the data. For instance, a PICS header can be used to indicate where content is violent, pornographic, or the like. PICS typically requires the cognitive input of a human to determine the content of the metadata.
Several search engines, often used with the Internet such as ALTAVISTA and EXCITE, provide relevancy determinations. For instance, when searching for information on the Internet, the search engine will list the Internet sites in order of apparent relevance, and in some instances provide a numerical indication as to the relevance. Typically, relevancy determinations are a function of the number or proximity of "hits" from the search query in the site.